Andriasang reports that the new Tales of game is going to be fucking ace.

Baba confirmed that the game is indeed a mothership title. The catch phrase for the game is “Are you prepared to destroy the world for the girl?” This phrase apparently has some ties to both the story and gameplay systems.

Previous titles were “high fantasy” games with swords and magic. This time, the game will have a more modern theme. The game’s world view will be thick with cultural elements.

Hyped? I am.

I was probably the only person in the world who fucking loved Sands of Destruction (except for that fucking encounter rate), so I’m super psyched for this shit because it sounds very similar. This is probably our only chance to get a current-gen console RPG that has a mature plot and characters that aren’t immediately forgettable.

Who are these people again?

The previous games in the series have all been pretty generic, childish affairs (barring Yuri’s actions in ToV). But this game presents a unique and promising premise. It’s about fucking time J-RPGs stopped being shitty games aimed at pre-pubescents and got to innovating for once.

The new Tales game will be great because unlike Tales of Symphonia where you fight against a world order dedicated to causing your girlfriend to die to save the world, or Tales of Graces where you fight against a world’s orders that declare your childhood robot-girlfriend must die to save the world, or Tales of Vesperia where you fight against world guardians that consider your girlfriend a threat to the entire world, or…

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This is all kinds of sad since Tales of Symphonia was the first one I played & I greatly enjoyed it (yay to nostalgia?), Tales of Vesperia annoyed me, & I have yet to toss in Tales of Graces…. It guess it’s all about the journey & not the destination?

I’ve had good times with all three games (Hell, Vesperia’s in my top-5 list). I love J-RPGs, even if they are aimed at kids.

I’m mostly just mad that this seemed like a cool new direction for the series until I figured out that this was the plot of every other fucking Tales of game. Then I realized what a wasted opportunity it’s going to be.

I’ll admit, somehow I’ve only ever played Tales of Phantasia. I thought it was excellent it back then. Years later as more came out I always meant to get back into the series, then never quite did. I think you have inspired me to bump them up to the head of my retardedly long backlog (god damn sales). Dr. Sage and his sage advice.

Eh tales of is great. I like how they are all multiplayer unlike freaking FF. and the battle system is hack and slash so it’s not too generic. Though the new game sounds good but I need to read more before I get hyped. The only Tales of ham I flipped a lid for was graces f when I saw a trailer :)

Serious? To each their own, I guess, but out of the titles I’ve played (Symphonia 1&2, Abyss, Vesperia, and nearly finished Graces) I thought Abyss was the best in the series by far, and Vesperia the worst (though Graces looks like it’s going to take this position).

Vesperia was hilariously shallow, and dropped most of its subplots part way through then promptly forgot about them. Yuri was cool, but that’s all he was. He had pretty much zero character growth, and a static character is a boring character IMO. For that matter Karol is about the only character in all of Vesperia that had a decent arc. I started off hating him and really liked him by the end, everyone else was either mishandled or barely developed at all.

Compared to Abyss where every character had mountains of backstory, and a pretty big arc, appropriate for the respective character, that tied in with the overarching themes of the story. It actually had some philosophical clout, and wasn’t afraid to kill characters off, or take other extreme measures where the story called for it. Forgettable is about the last word I’d use to describe it. It had plenty of faults. It was overwritten, poorly paced at points, and generally could have used some editing, but the good points far outshone the bad points for me.

I know I haven’t said anything about gameplay, but gameplays is secondary to characters and story in my book. Not trying to troll, just interested in hearing why you think Abyss is terrible and Vesperia is great.

Asbel – Necessary because he can take a fucking hit.
Hubert – Necessary because this is multi-player and it’s my friend’s character of choice.
Pascal – Necessary because this is multi-player and it’s my friend’s character of choice.
Cheria – Necessary because of healing AoE artes.

What, you want me to drop Cheria for Sophie? Is she a better healer? Cuz that’s what I need my fourth character to be.

If you don’t have problems with Cheria, then keep using her. I hear that her AI has problems, though. Sophie was actually a really good healer for my team when I used Cheria; just set her to B artes only and turn off all artes except for healing ones). It’s generally difficult to get all of your characters together for an AoE healing arte, but if it works for you, disregard my opinion.

People bitch about her AI because they want her to use her OP A-Artes constantly on Evil mode. But they can’t turn off her A-Artes that aren’t so good, so she’s not an amazingly efficient God of Everything when the AI takes over. Too bad for them.

If you set her strats to make her constantly heal, she’ll constantly heal. And for my purposes, that’s great. Nurse is awesome because of its huge range, so it’s generally not a problem for me.

Cheria isn’t extremely OP until end game when your CC is 16-30. You need to control her though since her OP strategies are more-or-less using her A-Arte side combo and ending it with Indignation/Divine Saber (If you can get 25 CC, she can use her side combo twice then instant-cast Indignation aka Instant-nation).

My problem with Sophie is that she has the worst Burst-Artes and Accel in the game. Her healing is decent, but her offensive Bursts don’t flow at all with her. Her only good ones are Sword Assault (cause lol Iron Stance) and Gauntlet Blitz. I still used her for bosses though since Cheria + Sophie = party never dying.